POEM BY HARIS VLAVIANOS

GIFT FROM HEAVEN

What makes you believe that

I can still live in a room

from which you have removed

with certain gusto I may add

one of its four walls?

I agree the view is better —

not that one can see at the far end

Arno and the Ponte Vecchio —

but you think this major renovation

is a good reason for us to return

with our reignited courage

during the first act of the play?

And the four syllable word on the wine bottle

and the meat cooked with prunes

and the candles that supposedly repel the mosquitos

what do they truly mean?

And the young server

with the heavy accent

from which Russian novel

has he suddenly sprang up?

And how the fact that Adorno

as you tell me emphatically

had dined with Greta Garbo

in Los Angeles in 1944

and that his dog, Ali Baba — what a name

urinated onto her book

change anything?

Do you hear the rustle of the leaves

and the voices of the children

who come down our street

on their rollerblades?

Do you know that the message they carry

belongs to a future

you haven’t imagined?

Close your eyes for a while.

Sometimes is better to look at reality

without trying to estimate

in how many minutes the sun will go down

besides right now

the point isn’t

this particular sundown

but the gift it has given us.

Did you say — wasted years?

Don’t turn melancholy.

Is there ever a Paradise

that is not lost

at the end of the dream?

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III

Thick worms of the army washrooms

gigantic rats from the septic tanks

they search the sacks for bread all night long

they step over faces,

the eaten face of a cat.

The day roosts on the mountain like a raven

the night falls when the soldiers masturbate

the night patrols and the tail movements.

Under the moonlight

two were going at each other

behind the washrooms.

One of them had a wife and children

and one called Skarvellas put his rotten face

in my sleep to see whether I was singing.

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EMPTY NATURE (1993)

                                                 For Rodney

                                                 on our thirty years together

OESTRUS OF DEATH

                                               They turned the fear of death into the oestrus of their lives

                                                                       ~Andreas Empiricos

I

The spastic woman lost control

and the carriage like an animal bridled by pain

dashed screeching wildly.

Soon after

like sudden nausea

the memory of the real body

came back to her

and the unfortunate woman

restarted going almost joyous

on her small wheels.

Opposite, wrapped in the rosy hues

of the gray time

the house where Thrush was born.

Ah, but first I have to describe

the reef to which I swam:

its shape, the chaki color

reminded me of a backpack

like the ones which eons ago we filled

with the sandwiches of youth.

I kept on closing to the reef

helped by the waters

with their light-blue blouses

that had painted on their blouses cypresses

from the cemetery of the opposite shore.

The beautiful temptation had overtaken me:

to not ever return again

to close the underwater cycle

— neckless of unimaginable value —

around my neck.

As I swam farther out

— I slowly ripped the fabric of the sea —

I kicked drawn loves that surfaced

I kicked them back to lay

down on their weed beds.

Then I questioned myself

if I had truly desired

those acceptable shapes

of the desirable, something

between the subjected body

and the empty talk…

Eros is the only godly glance

that might fall on us

the unbelievers, I would say.

Yet, look, how the sea with the blue

eyelids arouses me now

I’m lasciviously scared

and I float on ditch water

not knowing where it takes me

because I step

the invisible side of lust:

death.

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